Why is Mother Theresa criticised for not doing things that weren’t her job?

Mother Theresa has been canonised today; cue for contained rapture on the part of her Missionaries of Charity and supporters in Rome and a rather different kind of satisfaction on the part of her critics, who now have a useful opportunity to air their objections to her work and cult.

It’s hard to think of two groups not so much at odds but at cross purposes. The BBC news reports on the canonisation by the excellent Caroline Wyatt rehearse some of the more familiar criticisms: her hospices lack the best medical equipment and good hygiene; moreover, she took money from dictators. And according to representatives of Hindu nationalist groups, she also unhelpfully projected an image of Calcutta (to use the old designation) as being poverty-ridden and somewhere people die on the streets. Oh, and for good measure, she didn’t tackle ‘the underlying causes of poverty’. And she proselytised among the dying…forced them to convert to Catholicism.